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Rocket League - PlayStation 4

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Summary:

In Rocket League, soccer meets racing once again in our long-awaited, physics-based multiplayer-focused sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! Choose a variety of high-flying vehicles equipped with huge rocket boosters and soar into the air to score amazing aerial goals, perform incredible saves, and even demolish enemy players at unbelievable speeds. Rocket League is fun that appeals to the hardcore sports enthusiast and the casual arcade gamer.

8.1

Rocket League came out for the PlayStation 4 this past July, 2015. The game was developed by the team at Psyonix and it released on the PC, as well. An arcade game that focuses on insane physics, tweaked sporting events, and gigantic vehicles could only mean a ton of fun if the multiplayer aspect came to fruition within the PSN. As it turns out, multiplayer is better than ever. With offline co-op split screen and giant online matches this was sure to win over the hearts of PlayStation gamers everywhere. We decided to dip into the PS4’s hottest new title just to see what all the rage was about. As it turns out, the hype was real and well worth the price of admission. Keep reading to see why Rocket League is our favourite PS4 title.

At its core Psyonix’s heavy hitting title is simple: mash together soccer with futuristic cars and let people go crazy trying to score goals. It’s a simple, identifiable, and completely catchy hook that should leave any gamer ready to sweat out a bunch of matches. Despite its simplicity there is a ton going on underneath the surface and that is what keeps this game so consistently fun. The simple foundation sets up shop for a host of enjoyable content fifty, eighty, and a hundred hours later.

The core of your experience will consist of two teams of four cars facing against one another as they seek to control the field, push the ball, and score. Along the way you’ll see cars take off into flight, bounce off of the arena like walls, and perform special skid maneuvers in order to hit the ball just right so it can get into the goal. The core concept of gameplay drives all of the action and, unlike the very real sport of soccer, no rules or regulations will get in the way of the action. This means that things get chaotic fast and that chaos is what helps to drive this title forward.

Being that the game is simple, not to mention quite visually appealing, anybody can jump in and have fun and moderate success. We don’t like to admit that sports are based, in part, in luck but that is the truth here. If you happen to be in the right spot at the right time you can nab a pretty nifty goal. But that doesn’t mean that the game itself is easy. There are so many different options and maneuvers that you can perform in order to perfect your play style that doing so will take quite awhile. But the fun is in the application and you will be practicing a lot if you end up enjoying the title.

Rocket League uses its advanced physics engine at full throttle, making every maneuver you take on the field an important one. The ball moves in a perfectly natural way and the vehicles you drive also perform incredibly. This isn’t a game with clunky controls despite how hard and chaotic things can get at time. The chaos reaches a fever pitch whenever a car actually scores a goal. Upon scoring a goal the entire arena explodes, sending cars flying everywhere. And why not? This is a game about showboating, so blowing up the arena every time you flip your car through the air and nose the ball in sounds like a good reward.

As you play through your matches, online or offline, you will see boost pads all over the field. These allow you to charge up power in order to give your car a huge boost of speed. Use this speed to super hit the ball across the arena or in order to take out an enemy car. Getting enough speed and T-boning an enemy will effectively destroy their vehicle. But destruction isn’t the only thing that you’ll pay attention to.

You score points for your team by knocking in goals, defending your team’s goal, moving the ball to centre, and even performing stunts in the game. Collect enough points and you can begin to rank up, getting more unlockables into your corner which will increase your experience. The more you level up the more you will get to do, from unlocking new decals and body types all the way to getting better wheels or even improved boosting colours. The game focuses on rewarding you as much as possible and you are never far away from getting something new and cool to add to your library of stuff.

Despite the fact that the game is fairly equalized to new and advanced players one of the biggest problems we ran into was that matches never stayed even. What we mean by that is we rarely had competitive games. Either we were blowing our opposing team out of the water or getting blown out ourselves. The matches which showcased close victories or losses were the most enjoyable, of course. That experience isn’t indicative or derisive of the game but it is interesting that we consistently couldn’t find competitive games.

We also want to commend and wag our finger at the camera options in the game. The primary camera you will be using focuses on your car and is purposely functional and effective. The second camera option focuses instead on the ball and is much harder to work with. In fact we would call that camera mode borderline unusable as it renders much of the game more difficult and slower paced than it should ever be, especially with how competitive the title is.

Rocket League is a brightly coloured experience with impressive textures and a graphics system that holds up despite the nonstop action. Don’t look at screenshots to back this up because they don’t catch the rapid movement that the game relies on.

Rocket League is fun that appeals to the hardcore sports enthusiast and the casual arcade gamer. With absolutely no illusions about itself, the title succeeds in every way that it aspires and is one of our favourite new games for the PS4.

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